You are here because of the reopening of an investigation into a serious injury that happened many years ago, when you were much younger.
A person named Patty Friesen was in an empty house with other children when she apparently fell. She has not been able to walk since, and had some brain injury as a result of this injury.
According to the reports filed at the time of this event, you were present when this happened. We would like to hear your version of what happened.
I wasn't exactly there when Patty jumped. I was elsewhere in the house. I remember hearing some jeering and a scream, and a thump. I ran over, and she was there on the floor and lying there still.
There's no doubt in my mind now that I've read your charts that you haven't been completely honest with me.
I hung around with a number of kids in the neighbourhood
There were just three of us – there was Patty, me, and my friend Margo.
We didn’t really want her to hang out with us, but she was the kid that was just always just tagging along.
Anyway it was the place where all the teens used to hang out. It was some place that if you could find a basement window or whatever, you got into and you played in.
Patty was a bit of a daredevil and she decided that we should go in.
The windows were all intact and the door was open, and we had heard that other kids had gone into it.
We just went through an empty window.
So you were in a different room than Patty was - that’s clear in your mind?
No I wasn’t there at the time, but I knew that this was a game that we played.
“I was downstairs with I think Matt, and the rest were upstairs...and all of a sudden there was this scream, and we heard this big crash.
My sense of it is that the floor gave way, and that she fell. I didn’t actually see it.
And I heard a crash, a big thump, Patty screamed, Margo screamed. And so I came rushing into the front room.
A few of us were getting afraid and wanted to run away, yet we kind of regrouped and sort of thought it would be best to go and get an adult.”
I know you have regretted it all you life since. I can see it in your face.
What if I were to suggest to you that you in fact were upstairs and that you pushed her through that hole, what would you say to that?
“No. She had walked right across where the pipe would have been, and she just crashed through.”
And it was so odd because she wasn’t screaming, she just asked for her mom.
The rest of us kids, we ran, we ran home.
They went to my mom and they called the police, and the police came, the ambulance came and all that sort of thing and it was a real nightmare.
We all make mistakes. The important thing is how we deal with those mistakes… Can we say we’re sorry and move on?